Chris Hofmann

As Director of Engineering and then Special Projects at the Mozilla Foundation and Corporation since 2003, Chris Hofmann has spearheaded the research and development work of thousands of open source contributors around the world.

A Netscape employee before joining Mozilla, Chris contributed to every Netscape and Mozilla browser release since 1996.

As the first employee at the Mozilla Foundation in August 2003, Chris led a small but devoted team of the original ten engineers that established the Mozilla Foundation as an independent and self-sustaining organization.

In 2004, Chris managed and executed the first worldwide release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0. Firefox 1.0 helped to fulfill the Mozilla Foundation’s goal of supporting open Web standards and provide innovation and choice for Internet client software and set Firefox on a path to remarkable market share growth over the last several years.

Chris now helps to build and strengthen Mozilla communities around the world. These contributors and communities are involved with localization of Firefox in to over 70 languages, extend Firefox with Addons, and provide support to Firefox users. He engages with security researchers to help improve browser security and manages Mozilla's Security Bug Bounty Program. He is also interested in engaging, helping, and promoting the work done in companies and large institutions to deploy Firefox use and Mozilla technology.